A Tale of Two Gay Movies

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's seminal FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1975), is a German production set in Munich in times contemporaneous with the production, and follows the tragic rise and seemingly inevitable fall of Franz/ Fox, played by Fassbinder himself, a not-so-bright carny whose impulsive impetuousness is matched only by the swift riptide currents of his very life.  

FOX's titular friends represent Germany's social milieu--high class and low--a whirlwind of interested parties surrounding Franz, himself the unexpected recipient of a financial windfall that sets the movie's action into motion.  Some of his friends--sister Hedwig, the carnies from the circus, and the seedy, gay bar denizens--hail from Fox's same social class.  Ordinary in every sense, alcoholically-minded and with money problems to boot, they are ultimately reflections of Fox's psyche, matching his crudeness and mean-minded ideals.    

The new friends on the scene are the wealthy and snobby Munich elite, arriving into Fox's life as a result of his newfound riches.  Fox eschews his former working class set for the new affluent one, a change in social settings that reveals the more pitiable aspects of everyone involved, with Fox remaining the same debauched, uneducated scoundrel of the outset, a lack of evolution that leads to his doomed fate.  

  

On the flip side there's CHRISTOPHER, AND HIS KIND (2011).  Directed by Geoffrey Sax, this is a lush BBC adaptation of the 1976 autobiography by Christopher Isherwood, covering the period the author spent in Germany between World Wars, having been drawn there from England to the mecca that was the gay Berlin of the late 20s/early 30s.   

Superficial at best, the film can be distilled to a fastidious preoccupation with its set-design, theme music, and costuming.  Sadly, the only reason CHRISTOPHER works it that the cast is terribly cute, and the sex is surprisingly frank and gorgeously depicted.  As a whole, the work falls just shy of cloying, being a few tweaks too perfect in its construction.  It's as if Disney teamed up with Merchant Ivory in the style of Hercule Poirot on PBS, especially lagging when transparently contrived emotion is attempted to be garnered through obvious and overhanded scoring.       

FOX AND HIS FRIENDS was released one year prior to the 1976 publishing of Christopher Isherwood's book CHRISTOPHER, AND HIS KIND.  Products of their time, both the German film and the English book ride the current of the then new modern-gay-liberation movement, emboldened with the self-confidence to candidly depict a heretofore denigrated lifestyle.  Both films, in showing situations of defiant openness on the one hand, and of persecution and hiding on the other, contain experiences that ring true and speak to us today, the good and the bad coexisting and overlapping in ways reflective of the complexities of actual life.  

The older of the two films, FOX AND HIS FRIENDS is inherently the more rewarding film to watch.  Despite what might be perceived as FOX's shortcomings in terms of its look as compared to CHRISTOPHER, AND HIS KIND, the latter, as stated, often gets lost in its production values, not delivering much more than what it can provide at that level.  While a thoroughly well-depicted romp is appreciable by any means, any gains CHRISTOPHER makes are quickly lost when periodic, mechanical pulling of heartstrings occurs.  FOX, with its story of vulgarity, breathes a little more easily, less bogged down by the merely visual elements.  While CHRISTOPHER's saving grace is the sheer Britishness of its production, its irrevocable schmaltziness pushes one to opt for crass-filled FOX, the story in which the guy dies at the end. 

Fox and His Friends | Trailer  

Christopher and His Kind | Full YouTube